MOBILE, Alabama -- Science brought Kathy and Neff Weber together, but their mutual love and shared faith kept them together for more than half a century. When they met in the fall of 1959 at Spring Hill College, she was a freshman from Auburn, studying chemistry, and he was a senior physics major from Memphis. They shared an interest in science, so they often studied together.

The fact that he was a senior "was kind of a thrill for me," she admits, but she also found him "smart" and "serious" and appreciated his quick wit. "He was funny, and I love to laugh!"

Growing up in Auburn, she said, she didn't know many other Catholics. "I have to say that Neff has always been deeply religious, and I found that very attractive," she said. "He was serious about religion in a good way."

Neff went off to the University of Virginia, where he earned a Ph.D. in physics. The couple married in August of 1961, and then Neff, who had been an ROTC student at Spring Hill, spent two years in the Army. They were thankful that, instead of being sent to Vietnam, he was assigned to a ballistics research lab at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

A friend of Neff's, Richard Sweet, who lived in Mobile, suggested that he apply for a teaching position at the relatively new University of South Alabama. The Webers moved to Mobile in 1967, and Neff taught physics, even chairing the department for 18 years, until he retired some 30 years later.

The Webers had five children, with a 15-year span between the oldest and the youngest. They have 18 living grandchildren who called their grandfather "Grampa Neff." (His full name was Faustin Neff Weber Jr., said Kathy, adding that Neff's mother wanted him to have a "distinctive" name. Faustin was his father's name, and Neff is an Americanized version of the French "neuf," or "nine," which was his mother's maiden name.)

"Neff loved three things: the Lord, his family and teaching," Kathy said.

"He was so happy going to work each day," she recalled. "He would whistle when he left." After he retired, he returned to the classroom, offering to teach for free at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School. Kathy said, though, that the school insisted on paying him. "He taught an AP physics course for 11 years," she said. Later, he spent three years teaching eighth-grade science at St. Mary's Catholic School.

Teaching at a Catholic school allowed him to "talk about God," Kathy said. "He saw physics as explaining laws that govern God's creation. He loved having the freedom to do that."

In 1971, Kathy said, she and Neff both experienced "a religious conversion experience, even though we were already Catholic." She described it as "a deeper understanding of the Holy Spirit within us." Their experience was part of the Charismatic Renewal movement, she said.

The Webers sold their home near USA and moved to midtown Mobile —"what was then the inner city," she said. On Julia Street, they attempted to create a community of likeminded people who would start every day praying together at 5:30 a.m. When that "noble effort" failed, he tried to bring together several more groups.

"Neff had more perseverance than 10 of most people," Kathy said. Eventually they joined a group called The People of Praise, "an ecumenical, charismatic, lay Christian community founded in the early '70s out of South Bend, Ind.," she said. Neff led the Mobile branch for some 25 years until the Webers decided the national group's views were no longer in line with theirs.

"My husband had a heart for the poor, the disadvantaged and the marginalized," she said. He would befriend people who were staying at the halfway house on their street and invite them to dinner. "He was trying to be charitable to them," she said. "It was much harder for me than it was for him. I recognized his goodness. He stretched me."

Their children, she said, grew up believing that "Christianity is a way of life," Kathy said. "It has to permeate your life, and I think it pretty much has with each of them."

No matter who was at the table with them, the Webers ate dinner together every night. "Neff loved to tell stories," Kathy said. "The kids loved them, then the grandkids loved them. He would use incidents from his childhood as morality stories." In his tales, he called his childhood self "Naughty Neff." "He was kind of a rambunctious child," she said. One Christmas, he compiled Naughty Neff stories and made books for each of their children's families.

He never stopped teaching. For years, he tutored underprivileged students in math and science every Saturday, working with pediatrician Dr. Jennifer Johnson and her Saturday school program in Mobile. "At the very time he died, he was tutoring students for free in our home," Kathy said.

Though he remained "vigorous and strong," she said, when Neff was in his early 70s, he started having occasional seizures when he was going to sleep or waking up. His neurologist couldn't detect a reason for the seizures, but put him on anti-seizure medication.

After he blacked out on one occasion and fell, hitting his head, he was admitted to the hospital. While there, he was diagnosed with heart arrhythmia and, just before Christmas of 2013, he had a pacemaker put in. At 75 years old, Neff was "older and slower, but still living a normal life," she said.

One beautiful spring weekend, the Webers went to their condo in Orange Beach. On Palm Sunday, April 13, they went to church, came home and ate breakfast, and Neff went out for a walk. "He went down the beach and didn't come back," Kathy said. "Finally, I got worried." By the time she found him, paramedics were trying to resuscitate him, to no avail. "He died on the beach," she said.

Though his sudden death was a terrible blow to his family, Kathy said that her husband "did not want to grow old and infirm." "I think the Lord honored that," she said. "He took him away on a beautiful Sunday morning while he was walking on the beach. In one sense, it was a beautiful death; in another, it was a huge shock."

Michelle Matthews welcomes your suggestions for Life Stories from the Mobile area. Know an ordinary person who lived an extraordinary life? Please contact Michelle at mmatthews@al.com.